_____________________________________________________________________
MORE ON MOUNDSBAR
My title is, despite its melisonance, not quite apt, since my
previous note on this strange language, published in the journal
_Quaestio_, was in error in almost every respect. Afterthought
prompts the conclusion that this was due to my having obtained most
of the data by telephone.
In any event it turns out that the many vowel phones of
Moundsbar can be wrestled down to seven vowel phonemes: an open
central unrounded, written /a/, two close back rounded, two close
front unrounded, and two central vowels, a higher and a lower,
which can only be described as square. Examples follow:
_mi_ 'one juju bean'
_me_ 'he flies up'
_su_ 'he flies down; two juju beans'
_so_ 'so?'
_sa_ 'mother (son or daughter speaking)'
Especially important is the distinction among /o/, /0/, and
/+/:
_kpo_ 'pigs; linguists'
_kp0_ 'he keeps pigs; he is an informant'
_kp+_ 'he has much pudding'
Apertures for these last three vowels are shown below:
\ / \ / \ /
O O O O O O
^ ^ ^
o 0 +
(Though I am not a physical anthropologist it is hard to overlook
the fact that younger Moundsbarians have no ears. This is due to the
rather severe nature of topicalization; see my earlier article.)
In addition to the seven vowel phonemes there is a nasal syllabic
which I write as /N/. Its two principal allophones are shown below.
\ / \ /
O O O O
^ ^
N /\/
Examples:
_dNk_ 'they (pl) walk'
_tNk_ 'how many string-shaped avocado peelings?'
My next note on Moundsbar will treat the (controversial)
pulmonic ingressive uvular trill, or "voiced snore." If, that is,
my funding holds out.
- Metalleus
_____________________________________________________________________
THE VOICED SNORE DEBUNKED*
I promised, in my last note, now to discuss that feature which
has made Moundsbar such a catchword among students of exotic
languages (hod-carriers and sheet-metal workers being notably less
concerned with it), the so-called "voiced snore." "So-called" I
say, because it has turned out to be perhaps the rankest hoax to be
put over on the scholarly community since Cognitive Spelling, or
the smoking of oven-dried banana peelings in the late seventies.
Let us face facts. There are, essentially, only two ways in
which a pulmonic ingressive uvular (properly, velic) trill can
possibly be voiced. For if the vocal cords are approximated during
its production, they are doomed. Indeed, in December of last year,
the Nepalese phonetician Ramawatar Dhati attempted it, and
according to reports, swallowed his own larynx. Normal voicing,
then, is definitely out. Forget it. Kiss it off. There remains
either vibration of the lips during ingression, against which the
laws of physics amass themselves in galloping herds, or a jaw-harp
may be twanged against the upper incisors. Any other expedient
would make breathing an accomplishment of the highest order, let
alone anything we might call speech.
Nonetheless, there you have it; and since the phoneme
definitely exists in the language, though we do not know what it
is, I propose that we symbolize it as /5/ (there is no need, you
will recall, for numeral symbols in Moundsbar, the first twenty-
five numeral words being taboo, so we may as well use them for
something else). We will say that this phoneme has the
*underlying* properties that a voiced snore would have, if there
were any such sound; there are many precedents for this in
Classical Phonology, and if this is not the best possible analysis,
it definitely beats whatever is in second place.
We (you and I) have now described the Moundsbar syllabics,
including /N/, and the consonant /5/; the sound system up to now:
i u m N kp
e o s
0 + 5
a
- Metalleus
*The first token of "phonemes" in my previous note should have been
"phones."
_____________________________________________________________________
PARABLE OF THE TWO KINGDOMS
Two kingdoms had been at war for thirty years, but the time
came when the crown prince of one kingdom fell in love with the
vizier's daughter of the other kingdom.
Now these two had roughly the worldly sophistication of your
average pair of iguanas, and they said, "Lo, we will teach our two
kingdoms to speak the same language, and then they will understand
each other and will be at peace." So they cast about for a
suitable, neutral language and eventually decided upon Ethiopian,
because most of its vowels were schwa, and they reasoned, not
wholly lacking in prudence, that "Anyone who can't pronounce schwa
can't pronounce anything."
But while attending to schwa the crown prince and the vizier's
daughter overlooked the inhibiting effect upon the average citizen
of deponent verbs and object participles. In fact, when the people
of the two kingdoms discovered that their new language had deponent
verbs and object participles, they seized the unfortunate youths
and shoved them off the edge of a cliff.
Then they resumed their fighting.
ANALYSIS: If the two kingdoms had learned the same language and
understood each other, they probably would have fought even harder
than they did.
- Metalleus
_____________________________________________________________________
TOPICALIZATION IN MOUNDSBAR*
*In this note topicalization will mean the simple designation
of what the speaker is talking about. To those enemies of clarity
who object to this, I say, Poo.
As is well-known by now, modern Moundsbar, cursed with perhaps
the most rigid word-order known to us, not only disdains movement
rules, but actively pursues them with an eye to their destruction.
As a result, shouting, accompanied by a tensing of the facial
muscles, is the most common means of foregrounding a constituent in
this language, bolstered on certain occasions by the severer
device of grasping the intended hearer by the ears and lifting
slightly. This second strategy is rarely needed other than
in speaking to children, however, since adult Moundsbarians have
acquired the ability to watch each other's lips carefully in order
to distinguish the various vowels, and under these conditions it is
hard to miss the facial tensing just mentioned.
This of course raises the question of topicalization in the
written language. At earlier stages of both the spoken and the
written language, a constituent could be moved to the extreme left,
slamming it into a major juncture and giving rise to various
particles. This is still possible in the more archaic written
styles; however very few Moundsbarians can read and write today,
probably in part a result of their having acquired the cathode-ray
tube before they had completely mastered agriculture. Those few
who are literate usually do not read aloud, in fear of losing their
lives by appearing to move constituents.
Constituents are backgrounded, or removed as it were from the
spotlight, by deleting them. This may include entire predicates,
resulting in sentences which convey no new information whatever,
other than underlyingly. This is either good or bad, depending on
one's linguistic theory; the Moundsbarians themselves do not have
linguistic theory and thus it is not surprising that they have not
been heard to express a viewpoint on the matter. One of my older
informants suspended his ritual insults long enough to opine that
in general there *is* no new information. Make of this what you
will.
Being double-parked at the moment, I am unable here to go into
the question of the origin of the Moundsbarian fear of movement
rules. Comparative evidence would be of help, and despite the
vehement protests of the peoples involved, there are a number of
languages in the area related to Moundsbar, several of which
appear to have movement rules. When I understand all this, I will
let you know.
- Metalleus
[I have received inquiries about further notes by my colleague
Metalleus on the Moundsbar language; unfortunately in the late 20th
century there is almost nothing too absurd to be taken seriously, and
fear that there may be even more misunderstandings than I have been
made aware of forbids the issuance of more of the Moundsbar research
results, at least until I can figure out how to prevent the stuff from
showing up as footnotes in _Linguistic Inquiry_. -KM]
_____________________________________________________________________
THE INFORMANT
It was Scott's first field experience, so his professor was
with him to assure nervousness. The informant, who had one massive
eyebrow extending all the way across his forehead, glared at them
across the table. Scott pressed the record button and surveyed his
Swadesh list.
"All right, Mr. Pematesit, how do you say 'one'?"
The informant raised his eyebrow.
"'One'?"
The professor frowned as Scott carefully transcribed "w^n" and
added, in parentheses, "rising intonation."
"Ah, wait a minute, Scott." Then to the informant: "Yes, Mr.
Pematesit, how do you say 'one'?"
The informant stared.
"One," he slowly replied, with a look of incredulity.
Scott inserted "or falling" between "rising" and "intonation."
The professor closed his eyes momentarily, as professors will do
sometimes.
"In your _language_, Mr. Pematesit; how do you say 'one' in
your language?"
"In Basilewe? Oh." Mr. Pematesit looked somewhat more
cooperative. After a moment: "One what?"
"Aha," cried Scott, beginning to write.
"No, no -- I think we need to put the number words in a frame.
Pick a noun from the list."
"Oh, right. Okay, how do you say 'one man'?"
This the informant pondered for some time. Finally he said,
"That doesn't make any sense."
Scott and the professor looked at each other.
"Unless you mean a prisoner. That's _bakje_. Prisoner. You
win him, like."
"Mr. Pematesit," murmured the professor, sensing the situation
slipping out of control, "can you count for us, slowly, from one to
ten?" Scott readied his pencil, grimly.
"One," began their antagonist, opening his eyes widely and
extending his thumb. "Two..."
"Stop," ordered the professor, seizing Scott's hand in mid-caret.
"Professor," said Scott, "I hate to ask this..."
"Go ahead, my boy. Do you see what we are learning so far?"
He laid a consoling hand on his student's shoulder.
"Yes!" replied Scott, excitedly. "The Basilewes borrowed
their numbers from the British."
"No," said the professor firmly. "We are learning that
intelligence is inequitably distributed across members of all
cultures equally. Now then, Mr. Pematesit: can you count for us,
in your language, from one to ten?"
"Yes," responded the informant, now smiling broadly. Several
moments passed. Scott poised his pencil. The professor stared at
the table. After about thirty more seconds there was a soft click,
followed by a papery whirring sound.
"Your tape ran out," observed the informant, helpfully.
- Metalleus
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HOW TO MAKE A LINGUISTIC THEORY*
*This manuscript was found in an empty xerox-paper box at Harvard
University. Within the history of linguistic science we believe it
dates from the early medieval period, but we do not really care much.
Assemble a judicious amount of grammar, preferably English
grammar since you're aiming at readers of English. (If you feel
there might be a market for linguistic theories written in Cebuano,
by all means, give it your best shot.) Be sure to include passive
constructions, accusative-with-infinitive constructions, and
constructions with front-shifting. Leave everything else to future
research (don't worry, you'll never have to actually do it).
Set up two levels of linguistic representation; call them
Level 1 and Level 2, or even better, Level Alpha and Level Beta.
This is to divide your explicanda into two conceptual domains so
you can let one explain the other. Leave these levels and all
constructs supporting them undefined; these will be your
Theoretical Primes. Define everything else, however, not only as
rigorously as possible but using as many symbols from the predicate
calculus as you can understand.
Be sure to leave undefined the notion "mu." Now make "mu" a
unit at both undefined levels. For each "mu" use ordinary English
spelling, but in upper case letters on one level, and in lower case
letters on the other. Use abbreviations with upper case; for
example ERG, PRO, +ITAL for "ergative," "pronominal," "borrowed
from Italian."
From this point on you need a graphics expert. Draw guitar
strings (don't call them that, of course) from units on one level
to units on the other level. Count and classify the various
arrangements of strings you need for the amount of grammar you
began with; then pronounce all other logically possible
arrangements of strings forbidden by Universal Constraints.
Give each constraint a handy name, such as "The Adjustable Bridge
Constraint," "The Open-String Pull-Off Constraint." Always
capitalize and use "the" with constraints.
At this point it will be proper, though not absolutely
necessary, to bung in a bit of data from other languages. Since
ultimately theories like yours can be constructed only by trained
linguists who speak natively the languages they are examining,
frankly, the Second Coming will be upon us well before you'll
really have to think seriously about other languages. Besides, you
have this neat argument:
Premiss 1: If my theory won't account for English,
then it won't account for all languages.
Premiss 2: My theory won't account for English.
Conclusion: Bingo.
With regard to marketing your theory, this is a cinch because
of the way the academic world works. Your theory won't work, even
for English, right? That's a foregone conclusion. But for twenty
or thirty years, other people will make such a good living patching
it up that they'll praise you as a genius even while they're
bashing the daylights out of you, since without you, where would
they be?
Make occasional references to Kuhn.
- Metalleus
_____________________________________________________________________
MOUNDSBAR CONNECTIONS
On the isle of Dolop, off the coast of Gwap, lies the tiny
community of Pif. However, we know nothing about it.
Turning to Moundsbar, there are at least three languages
related to it, Aro, Sorno and Koro. Aro is spoken by a few hundred
souls in an enclave in the "Fan" district of Richmond, Virginia;
Sorno has been extinct since the third century but was spoken on
Guam and Saipan in the last years of the Roman Empire, though you
would never know it from Roman history; no speakers of Koro have
been located but a Koro language must be hypothesized to account
for certain telegrams received through the years by the
Moundsbarians which they were unable to read.
Moundsbar /kp/ corresponds to /p/ in Aro, /k/ in Sorno, and
/h/ in Koro. As we know, anything can become /h/, and /h/ can
become nothing; thus *h becomes nothing in Aro, /s/ after a glottal
stop in Koro (or maybe the other way around), and /5/ everywhere in
Moundsbar. Moundsbar /N/ surfaces as /m/ after another consonant
except /p/ in Koro, either /n/ or /m/ in Aro other than before a
non-nasal consonant where it becomes mere prenasalization, except
in a stressed syllable, and a ticket to Pasadena in Sorno. As for
vowels, they are poorly understood.
Since Aro has a movement rule, we set it up for the proto-
language. It is easier for three languages to lose the same thing,
than for a single language to acquire a marked feature at the
expense of a family universal.
Naturally the Sorno evidence has special importance, since it
is the oldest attested member of the family. However, everything
we know about it comes from Higgins, who believed that Sorno was
the language of the Voynich manuscript; Higgins also believed that
the Apostle Paul reached Guam, so there are limits to what you can
do with Higgins.
This is all I know about the genetic relationships of
Moundsbar to date. Needless to say, the Moundsbarians will have
none of it, insisting that their language was given to them by
Hercules as a punishment for making clothing out of two different
kinds of yarn. In these seas of ignorance, science splashes on.
- Metalleus
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MOUNDSBAR MULTILINGUALISM
The recent scarcity of reports on the linguistic _rara avis_
Moundsbar will, I am sure, be understood by all upon perusal of
the present communique; indeed I have placed myself, as the reader
will see, in certain bodily danger in order to update the matter.
The existence of the curious phoneme /5/, once erroneously
termed a "voiced snore," and of the square vowels in particular,
persuaded recent researchers that their uniformitarian assumptions,
triumphant as they had been thus far in our noble discipline,
must be suspended in the case of Moundsbar.
Their idea was, essentially, that the Moundsbarian speech
apparatus must be different from that commonly encountered. This
idea was at first greeted with derision by the scholarly community,
but once assurance was given that no one was saying the
Moundsbarians were inferior, merely that they were different,
opposition waned. Desiring to show themselves second to none in
the celebration of diversity, Higgins and his students obtained
several grants, and eventually spent one of them on the problem.
In spite of their suspicions they were not wholly prepared for what
they found.
It turns out that all Moundsbarians are multilingual. That
is, they actually have several tongues, each equipped with
partially separate musculature, and so amazingly dexterous (if that
is the correct word) that an individual is able to lift a single
garbanzo bean out of a bowl without a spoon, to say nothing of the
fact that, in the case of the square vowels, the first formant is
actually above the second formant.
Individuals differ as to which tongue predominates; this is
now known as "tonguedness" and has some relationship, as yet
undetermined, to regional specialization in the brain. There is a
tendency toward prognathism and very high cheekbones; even so, a
Moundsbarian is very likely, especially when speaking rapidly, to
accidentally bite one of his tongues, which is probably the cause
of their rather mean disposition and the popular, heretofore
bewildering saying, "Sharpness of tooth yieldeth wisdom."
Several issues are raised here for universals, both linguistic
and, one might say, lingual. For one thing, inhalation is
phonemic, which accounts for the "voiced snore." (Yes, I mean
exactly that; you cannot predict when a Moundsbarian is going to
inhale, and when one does, a token of /5/ occurs. Linguists must
simply gird up their loins and deal with it.) The question of
whether we are confronting a new species here I concur with Higgins
in leaving up to the exobiologists. They have had entirely too
much time on their hands, in my opinion. In any event: it is
clearly the multilingualism, that is the polyglossia, that produces
a great deal of fleshy tissue in the velic and pharyngeal area
causing strident ingression of air.
Thorough anatomical studies are being planned; these will of
course require more funding, and also a bit of luck. A disgruntled
former student of Higgins maliciously spread the rumor that autopsy
was to be the preferred stratagem, and now the people tend to
scatter when a linguist approaches them, and there has been a
certain amount of sniping in the towns. Higgins and I in fact
barely escaped from our last visit, and we lost Higgins's laptop.
We bide our time.
- Metalleus
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THE SORNO SCRIPT
As is glaringly obvious to the merest twit, a human utterance,
objectively and dispassionately considered, consists chiefly of a
series of vowels, interrupted occasionally by heterogeneous and
evanescent perturbations of formant patterns, called consonants.
Nothing could be clearer, than that speech is essentially a matter
of vowels. It might even be said that a consonant is nothing but
a gleam in the eye of a vowel.
Nonetheless, certain ancient peoples, innocent as the driven
snow of the above fact, converged with one mind upon systems of
writing in which only consonants were, for the most part, written.
This perversity was so widely imitated, that all ancient writing
systems, with the exception of the inscrutable Chinese, at one time
or another fell into the error of taking that unit of sound which
is as varied as the proverbial snowflake, and scarcely more
lasting, to be the very building block of speech.
All, that is, but one. As the reader may schon already have
surmised, I refer to the original writing system of Sorno, the
Moundsbar relative spoken in late Roman times on Guam and Saipan,
and researched extensively, as I have mentioned before, by my
colleague Higgins. In this script, only vowels were represented;
this constituted a very significant advancement, in anticipating
the sound spectrogram by some two thousand years, and in
representing a great step forward in economy to boot.
With regard to economy, we know well that a typical language
has fewer, usually considerably fewer, vowels than consonants, and
especially, if you don't count the long vowels separately. Sorno,
like modern Moundsbar, had seven vowels, and its consonants
numbered about fifteen. The need to learn only seven symbols,
rather than fifteen, in order to represent any utterance, is
obviously to be preferred.
One should not be misled by the "silent" vowels of certain
modern languages such as English. Few indeed could make out the
message: o auae ae oe ooa a oe. But compare the same message in
Spanish, which is not known for its silent letters: a aoia e o iioa
iee a ooae e oae. It is thus astonishing that consonant writing
is praised for its efficiency.
Unfortunately the Sorno script was rather short-lived (lasting
according to Higgins only a few months) before being abruptly
replaced by a system of pictographs. My own suspicion is that some
natural cataclysm accounts for its sudden disappearance, while
Higgins seeks a cognitive explanation.
The Sornos wrote by carving the vowels into solid rock with
entrenching tools, so what data there is is in quite good
condition. We also know that the vowel symbols were called
"animals." Why, is a mystery. I would gladly provide a specimen
of the script, but for the limitations of the medium. We are in
the process of wearing down the usual resistance of the scholarly
journals to our findings, and some texts should appear shortly.
- Metalleus
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MOUNDSBAR CONSONANTISM
To the sound system of Moundsbar as established previously
must now be added the familiar /p t k/, withheld from us up until
just this last week by our informants, whose odd sense of humor we
must simply live with:
p t k
i u m N kp
e o s
0 + 5
a
The stops are never noticeably aspirated but speakers' eyes
appear to take on a certain glint during their production, as if
they had it in mind. The labial nasal /m/ is dull and
uninteresting. The voiced quality of the pulmonic ingressive velic
trill, which the speakers produce upon inhalation, is as we have
said before, merely underlying and not to be taken seriously. /N/
is syllabic, with flared nostrils and a general chimpanzee-like
demeanor.
The previously established "doubly"-articulated stop /kp/ is
now known, in the light of Moundsbar multilingualism (the speakers
actually have several tongues), to have a lot more going on than we
thought. The same may be said for the square vowels /0 +/. It has
proven very difficult to study these sounds, since the usual X-ray
cinematography produces things that look like Cleveland at night.
The speakers have so far resisted our having recourse to surgery
and so further work stands in abeyance.
Clearly the most interesting systemic aspect of Moundsbar
consonantism is phonemic inhalation. This controversial claim has
been fairly well received, the opposition being limited for all
practical purposes to editors, publishers and reviewers. We state
once again that our logic is beyond reproach: /5/ is not
phonetically similar to any other sound of Moundsbar (or, for the
record, of any other language). Indeed, it is not even in the same
ball park, as it were, with any of them. There is therefore
nothing it could be an allophone of, and its occurrence is not
predictable. Its phonemic status thus follows as the night the
day.
Be it noted that the fact of phonemic exhalation, to wit, the
/h/ liberally sprinkled amongst the world's languages, has normally
been established by the same reasoning. As for contrast, both /h/,
in those languages in which it is a phoneme, and /5/, contrast with
whatever you please, including your Aunt Minnie, depending on the
phonotactics of the language.
It surely will not be objected, that inhalation is restricted
to the latter boundaries of breath groups. To offer such a
patently circular piece of nonsense in order to render /5/
predictable would surely meet with universal hoots and catcalls.
Other matters: following a square vowel, /k/ is square.
Velars, as is well-known, tend to be weak; Moundsbar /k/ has also
little compunction about becoming rounded preceding a rounded
vowel. *Between* rounded vowels, however, /k/ is not rounded; and
*between* square vowels /k/ is not square. One might expect some
degree of velar integrity given these latter two facts; yet when
between a rounded vowel and a square vowel /k/ apparently is unable
to make up its mind and alternates with zero. (To those
phonemicists of the late Pleistocene who still object to
alternation with zero, we say, as we have said before, Poo.)
The sibilant /s/, run-of-the mill in most respects, is voiced
between vowels whenever the temperature falls below about 10
degrees C. There was a time when such a rule would have called for
a certain amount of hullabaloo, possibly even talk show
appearances; but now that we know more about the language, not to
mention the people, it hardly seems worth crowing about.
- Metalleus
_____________________________________________________________________
THE PHONOLOGY CLASS
Prof. Higgins and his sauntering band of disciples filed out
of Mudd Hall in a merry mood. To say the class was feeling chipper
would be a considerable understatement.
For today's phonology class was to be held on the lawn, in
celebration of the first sunny day of Spring.
Higgins took up a standing position midway under the shade of
the redbud tree while the dozen or so students circled round and
assumed sidesaddle or squatting positions on the fresh green grass,
notebooks at the ready. Beaming, he started his lecture.
"Today I'd like to say a little more about duplication in
phonological description." So saying the professor turned around,
faced the north side of the administration building a few hundred
yards in the distance, blinked and frowned. "But there's no
blackboard."
"No chalk, either," volunteered Mavis, supportively glancing
around the lawn.
"Yes, well." Higgins was silent for a few moments.
* * *
How brief a time is often sufficient to apprehend long and
serious things! Higgins stared at his students, the surrounding
expanse of grass, the redbud tree. Now he saw where he had made
his error, his great error. But as we all know, the truth cannot
be taught.
"Consider the following forms," he began. The students, I
suppose we are entitled to believe, did their best to comply.
Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked.
ANALYSIS: A hunt on a krayd iz oys fonolog.
- Metalleus
_____________________________________________________________________
MOUNDSBAR NUMERALS
As mentioned in earlier work, the first twenty-five numeral
words of Moundsbar are taboo. Oddly, although these words are not
used, everyone seems to know what they are, except, unfortunately,
us. The fact that words similar to them in sound are also avoided
explains one heck of a lot of the problems we have had working on
this language.
There is, as one might have known, a compensatory, somewhat
massive, system of number marking on the noun, from dual to
vigintiquinqual:
/mi/ 'juju bean'
/su/ 'two juju beans'
...
/pa/ 'twenty-five juju beans'
While Moundsbar morphemes are often quite short (e.g., /-p-/
'old toothless tentmaker'), nonetheless the above examples do not
analyze. Despite the ample morphological resources made available
to the world's languages by the human mind's rich stock of
universal categories and parameter settings, Moundsbar, with nearly
unfathomable perversity, has chosen suppletion as its chief means
of number marking, with the result that well over 65% of the
nominal vocabulary of the language is unfamiliar to the average
speaker.
Since Moundsbarians have as much need to count as anyone, and
more now that they are experimenting with off-track betting as a
strategy for economic development, there are several standard
evasive manoeuvers that everyone accepts, such as indicating body
parts, carrying about a supply of pebbles, or carrying about a
supply of body parts. Some individuals make up their own words,
but then of course no one understands them.
Many people have asked us how the numeral words might have
become taboo. The original Moundsbarian religion, Mism, practiced
by the primitive Mists, posited two opposing cosmic forces, Even
and Odd, and held that by the end of the world, Even would win. We
think the Misthood became convinced that if counting had to begin
at twenty-six, the evens would be way ahead, encouraging, one might
say, the eschaton.
Of course the Moundsbarians have some damn fool explanation of
their own and say they never heard of Mism.
We do not anticipate a lexicon in the near future.
- Metalleus
_____________________________________________________________________
THE DERIVATION OF MOSES FROM MIDDLETOWN
I have just been informed that during this last month one
Silas O'Toole, a dedicated abstractionist known apparently to his
linguistic colleagues as "Rules" O'Toole, in a paper delivered to
the Linguistic Circle of Wyoming, proposed deriving Middletown from
Moses with "only eighteen ordered processes."
I will not dignify these "rules" by repeating them here;
O'Toole obviously takes us for a bunch of low-watt bulbs. Who,
blown by what ghastly winds of theory, is going to believe, outside
of Wyoming at any rate, that from five segments you can get eight?
Forms do not attract matter to them like black holes in the course
of their derivations; rather they lose matter, like shrinking
stars.
I have therefore proceeded to invert O'Toole's analysis and
derive instead Moses from Middletown; there are two possibilities.
(To be sure, the first alternative leaves the issue of accretion
vs. loss somewhat moot.)
I. A naive solution.
//midltawn//
-idltawn Deletion m
-oziz Insertion moziz
This solution definitely has the advantage of simplicity, but
the rules seem somewhat ad hoc. The second solution posits rules
which are or will be well-motivated either (a) now or (b) later:
II. A sophisticated solution.
//midltawn//
d-Assimilation milltawn
l-Deletion miltawn
l-Deletion schon wieder mal mitawn
Spirantization misawn
Voizing mizawn
Monoflippinphthongization mizon
Vowel Harmono mozon
Syncope mozn
Anglo-Frisian Brightening
n-Assimilation mozz
Epenthesis moziz
- Metalleus